Social Media Sensing (SMS 2017)

Motivation of the Track:

Billions of users daily interact with social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Google+, etc. The checking of the preferred social media platform is becoming the first thing to do at wake up time, and the last thing to do before falling asleep. With no doubts, social media revolutionized the content ecosystem and the behavior of millions of people. Within social media, people communicate, collaborate and share information, and within Online Social Media Data (OSMD), it is possible to find contents and metadata about people, brands, products, services, personal preferences, issues, etc. Not surprisingly, OSMD are being used to understand people’s opinions and to measure citizens’ feelings. Indeed, this knowledge represents a critical factor in strategic decision processes, as it may be helpful in identifying problems and strengthening strategies. For instance, politicians may gauge the public mood to improve their political decisions, enterprise managers may increase customers engagement by tracking what people think about products and services, city administrators may analyze citizens’ opinions to enhance the life quality of the city, advertisers can improve the effectiveness of their messages by analyzing what people think of a brand. The use of OSMD to get insights about people and society is not trivial and covers many different disciplines, like computer science, social engineering, psychology, semiotics, and economics.

Topics of the Track:

This special section is seeking work in progress and position papers covering all aspects of Social Media Sensing. In particular, topics of interest include, but are not limited to: